I am old — so old that when I was a college freshman there were dormitories filled with men and others filled with women but no dormitories at all filled with both men and women, at least not where I went to school. The women had it so bad that there was literally a time clock for signing-in and -out under the stern gaze of an old biddy tending the front desk — a desk she was determined that I, in particular, would NEVER get past.

And yet I did.

There was a public room for meeting visitors at the entrance of the women’s dorm, there was the front desk, and behind it the hated time clock with about a hundred paper cards — one for each resident — for punching in and out. Women had to be in their dorms (I am not making this up) by 10PM, after which the front desk closed and anyone coming-in later than that presumably went straight to jail — or to Hell — it was never made clear which.

Then one night I stole all the time cards. The biddy was gone from her post for just a moment, I vaulted the swinging gate, gathered-up all the time cards, and ran outside with my haul, which I later burned.

The cards were never replaced.

Sometimes change requires a catalyst and 39 years ago at a little college in Ohio I was that catalyst. Social mores were changing, even in Amish country, and it was only a matter of time before these same-sex barriers would fall. But still something has to happen to MAKE them fall.

I sense something similar coming for higher education in America, but this time it is likely to be the embrace of virtuality and what will go away could be the school, itself.

MIT has all its lectures available for viewing for free over the Internet. Why hasn’t some entrepreneur yet leveraged this amazing act of generosity? Some little school could outsource its entire physics department, for example, using MIT lectures and a single professor in-house. My physics department had only 2.5 professors (the .5 was the department chair who drove a cab on the side) and we didn’t have the benefit of MIT video.

There is enough good material available for free online right now that it would be easy to create a virtual university (WikiVersity?) with the only thing missing being the granting of degrees. It’s that whole “degree from MIT” thing that allows that school not to worry about sharing its lecture bounty, because in the education system lectures are viewed as worthless unless they lead to a degree.

Why is that?

My friend Richard Miller (he designed the Atari Jaguar video game console eons ago) is one of the smartest engineers I’ve ever met yet he doesn’t have a degree in engineering. Apple II designer Steve Wozniak got his degree from UC Berkeley only after leaving Apple in the early 1980s. In both cases their employers couldn’t have cared less.

What drives the education industry is producing degrees while what drives the computer industry is producing products and services.

When was the last time any employer asked to see your academic transcript? Have they ever?

What’s missing here is the higher education equivalent of a GED. Someone will come up with one, or they should, because all the other parts of the system are ready to go.

Cushing Academy, a tony prep school in western Massachusetts, is right now replacing its 20,000-volume library with a “learning center” containing 18 eBook readers, three giant TV screens, and a $12,000 espresso machine. I wonder why they need a building or even a room at all; wouldn’t it be cheaper just to give each kid an eBook reader and a Starbuck’s gift card?

We’re on the cusp of a new era where the marginal cost of insight is low enough to create new kinds of virtual education institutions. The important concept here is insight, which means more than fact, more than knowledge. It is the link between facts and knowledge, a true act of understanding that enables thinking people to create something completely new. Without insight you don’t know jack. But insight generally comes through personal connections — connections that to this point we’ve typically had to create campuses and pay $50,000 per year to enjoy.

That no longer makes sense.

Education, which — along with health care — seems to exist in an alternate economic universe, ought to be subject to the same economic realities as anything else. We should have a marketplace for insight. Take a variety of experts (both professors and lay specialists) and make them available over the Internet by video conference. Each expert charges by the minute with those charges adjusting over time until a real market value is reached. The whole setup would run like iTunes and sessions would be recorded for later review.

Remember, all lectures are also available online for free. What costs is the personal touch.

Say a particularly good professor wants to make $200,000 per year by working no more than 20 hours per week or about 1000 hours per year. That gives them a billing rate of $200 per hour.

Now look back at your university career. How much one-on-one time did you actually get with the professors who really influenced your life? I did the calculation and came up with about two hours per week, max. Imagine a four-year undergraduate career running 30 weeks per year — 120 total weeks of school — times two hours of insight per week for a total of 240 hours. At $200 per hour the cost comes to $48,000 or $12,000 per year.

That’s a huge savings compared to the $200,000+ an MIT-level education would cost today (remember the MIT online degree — there is one — costs the same as if you were attending in Cambridge). And ideally the pool of insightful experts would be far greater than any one university could ever employ. And that’s the point of this exercise; it can’t be an emulation of a traditional university, because that would inevitably disappoint — it has to be in at least one way clearly, obviously, stupendously BETTER than what’s available now.

This could happen tomorrow, the pieces are all there ready to be put together. Ironically it leverages one of the great red herrings of the Internet era — micropayments. So much could happen, we’ve all said, if only we could build a micropayment system that would actually work. Well we can, and what makes it work is that the payments at $200 per hour aren’t so micro. But they are micro enough.

It’s time to vault the gate and burn those cards… again.

Here’s an update as of Sunday night, September 6th — Bob

A number of readers have cited a feature story from Washington Monthly about an online university they see as very similar to the one I proposed above, charging only $99 per month. The story is here and the school in question is called Straighterline and I found something of a critique of the program here in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which may have an axe of its own to grind.

Straighterline is interesting and cost-effective, but it isn’t exactly what I proposed. Straighterline is more like online junior college with mainly introductory courses. this is not to say that it couldn’t become more in time and I hope it does. But to do so the company will have to take a somewhat different approach.

Straighterline has a problem with accreditation — they can’t get it. So they cut deals with no-name schools to effectively launder their credits, passing them on to third-party schools. I see nothing wrong with this but in time Straighterline or schools like it will have to take a more direct approach to the problem of gaining acceptance. The University of Phoenix did that through the simple expedient of offering real classes all over the place AND charging a lot more than $99 per month for all-you-can-learn. Exciting as that price is, it is precisely what scares the crap out of many established colleges.

If I were running Straighterline, then, I’d get ready to file a big restraint of trade lawsuit against some big vulnerable school caught up in, say, an NCAA athletic recruiting scandal. “Pick your targets carefully,” Pa Cringely always said.

The other thing I would strongly recommend is that Straighterline put some big bucks into recruiting its own stellar faculty. Spend whatever it takes to get the top people in some discipline to start. Hire academics if you can and lay practitioners if you can’t. Most academic contracts don’t prohibit teaching part-time elsewhere and if they do try to stop the practice, well that’s just a further example of restraint of trade.

As for the traditional schools with their red brick overhead, they remind me of a crowd I spoke to years ago in Minneapolis when I tried to explain the Internet to the people who run America’s many state lotteries.

Lotteries, it turns out, are actually run by folks who used to be at the Department of Motor Vehicles. They have a monopoly in their states on gambling and are determined to pursue it as a form of sin tax. The idea that I presented in 1998 that Internet gambling could eventually hurt them was laughable: didn’t those Internet folks know the lotteries had a monopoly in their states?

Yeah, right.

My recommendation was to take their games to the Internet and appeal to potential customers outside of Illinois or Iowa, maybe grab some of that easy money from Abu Dhabi. They looked at me like I had two heads, but history has shown I was correct.

And it will be the same way with my proposed online university or with Straighterline Pro, if that ever comes to be. Education is a talent business and anyone who can gather the best talent will offer the best service and have the greatest success. This doesn’t mean that Stanford and MIT will die, far from it. But it means that some lesser institutions WILL die, while hybrid operations that are entirely new and different may well thrive.

Imagine the various higher education equivalents of drivers schools for people working-off their traffic tickets (remember Comedy Traffic School?). With a solid curriculum available online to any institution, one point of differentiation can become location (Hawaii, California, France, on ship, etc.) or ambiance (health spa, sports, luxury, religious, etc.). The classes are identical, but where do you want to drink beer, and with whom?

Maybe this seems silly, but it is also one likely future of higher education.

222 Comments

Sergio
September 5, 2009 at 5:07 pm

Bob,

You are missing one important factor in the educational process: Except for very few talented individuals most learn not from their advisors but from other students! Context is key in educational institutions!

Sergio

Brian
September 5, 2009 at 5:50 pm

Context is important, but I’d argue you could virtualize it through chat rooms, discussion boards and what not with about the same fidelity that a podcast has to a real lecture. A few pieces may be missing, but not that many.

TE
September 5, 2009 at 9:21 pm

Virtualize a Chem Lab? A pair programming project? Sorry having tried to teach a friend a bit of python in a chat room was a miserable failure. Easier to drive two hours and stake out our favorite corner of the bar for the evening.

I have considerable experience teaching in the classroom and beyond and the key to many subject is proximity. Biology without green goo, Chem without organic slug, Physics without breaking at least something, Math without a trip to Vegas, History without the musty smell of vellum; we might as well all just become theoretic-meta-phyicists. Cringley is right about the reality distortion field around the price of education and eBooks can be great but somethings can just never be taught in a video lecture.

What’s to stop “virtual students” who are taking the same course from meeting up at a local bar to do the same thing? or at worst, from exchanging skype info and having a voice call where they can see and speak to each other?

It’s like that quote from jurassic park, “Life will find a way” … well in this case … “Social will find a way”

john hammond
September 7, 2009 at 10:29 am

Hook up at Secondlife.com

Flip
September 5, 2009 at 5:39 pm

“How much one-on-one time did you actually get with the professors who really influenced your life? ”

Zero.

At Purdue University, professors were only people who came into a lecture hall and babbled for 45 minutes and then went back to their research.

All actual TEACHING and student interaction was done by “teaching assistants” who were working the job in order to help pay for their graduate studies.

Pat F
September 6, 2009 at 8:51 am

I had several and I went to an Enormous State University. But mostly when I left the Engineering school and joined the Mathematics program. There was a math professor, later Dean, who changed my life literally when he exposed me to real math (not the crap they have to teach Engineers). I still exchange email with him, 40 years later.

What most folks don’t understand that when Eisenhower warned of the Military-Industrial complex, there was another one, the Government-University complex. The US pushed a huge amount of money to the Universities for research, some military, some not. The deal led to great inventions and science, but made the large research universities treat education as a secondary issue. This lead directly to all the grad students doing teaching while the professors are off chasing grants.

Peter G
September 5, 2009 at 5:50 pm

Yes, yes, I can see your point… but somehow I don’t think we’re there yet.

Every generation has had its autodidacts who have achieved greatness. It’s not a phenomenon new to the computer age.

Yet many smart, even brilliant, people need personal contact with teachers and students, and time, and repetition, to reach their personal heights.

Disintermediation is great for the time and repetition part, but not so good for the personal contact.

I interact with people every day sharing ideas. It’s almost all that I do. Most of those people I never meet. One of my closest friends, a guy I’ve e-mailed several times per week for at least 15 years, I’ve met fewer than a dozen times. You say that’s not good enough but I know it is good enough for me and I don’t even have the video link I described in the column. Here’s where you have a different preferred ideal where what we really should be talking about is what’s adequate for the job. Twitter, for example, is laughably far from ideal, yet it succeeds. This could too.

Nick
September 5, 2009 at 7:02 pm

Bob, while you have the adult motivation and autonomy to do what you do, I suggest that is not a proof that most nineteen year olds could do the same thing.

My sixteen year old son spends a great deal of time doing, IM (when he’s not doing Garageband) but, he only IMs people he meets at least weekly.

Funny you say this, we’ve been looking for postgraduates in a very specific sub-field of a field that they study in (specifically penetration testing and vulnerability research within a larger Msc of Information Security context) and we’ve been specifically asking candidates to send thesis summaries. The successful candidate’s (along with at least another five) will have their final thesis reviewed before getting to the second interview stage and *shock horror* will be given questions on it (because if it wasn’t relevant they wouldn’t get to second stage).

Well that’s a new one to me. I assume this if for a real job, not an academic appointment? How novel! But just think of all the potentially great candidates you’ll never see because they didn’t choose to write their thesis on your particular arcane topic? I think this is a bad approach.

Bob, you’re missing the point. Effective teaching and learning is not so much dependent on the resources like notes, books or videos, even if they are free. Rather it is substantially influenced by the degree, timeliness and quality of the interaction between teachers and students. It is hard to purchase this, so economic models are generally poorly applicable to educational enterprises.

Let’s take economic models first. How is it even possible that they can’t apply? Schools are part of the economy. If nobody majors in your subject your department shrinks, simple as that. Talk with a teaching assistant, a professor, a department head, a dean, then a president of a college or university and the higher you go the more it has to do with money. the higher you go, too, the more power that person has over the direction of the organization. So economic models are entirely applicable.

The more important question, though, is WHICH economic models? You are assuming, I believe, that I’ve bought-in to some stupid research university credo that says teaching is a useless sideline. How did I assign that $200 per hour figure, for example? I laid out certain needs of the teacher, but I also said the market would converge on the right price. Ultimately the value — and the economic model — is based on utility. The teachers who get paid the most are those in the greatest demand by students. Isn’t that the whole interaction point you are trying to make?

Then there is “degree, timeliness, and quality.” Hogwash. “He was a great teacher but not timely.” How does that sound?

Educations and careers are based on fortuitous experiences. Some of the people who have affected me most are those with whom I spent very little time. One of the important experiences of my academic life, for example, occurred not at my school but at a school I was visiting — New College at Oxford University. There, at a Common Room party, I met a somewhat drunk J.R.R. Tolkein. That was the moment I decided to be a writer because he was so good yet so unimposing that I figured — what the heck — maybe I could do that, too.

Another important influence was teh chairman of my orals committee, Kenneth Arrow. I got him by lottery, not merit, that’s for sure, but his good humor, broad interest, and kindness impressed me greatly. He was my kind of Nobel laureate.

These are the things that stick. LEARNING, that’s easy — or ought to be.

Bob

Michael Ryan
September 6, 2009 at 10:42 pm

Yes, Bob I think we are talking apples and oranges, on a number of levels. For example, there is the economics of *running* a university and then there is organising the teaching. The two are obviously connected, but different thinking applied to each. Sure, the higher up you go in the university hierarchy, the more the leaders are interested applying economic models. But where the teaching and supervision is organised, different thinking (to the economic) is required, particularly around the use of technology, designing pedagogy and applying discipline specific knowledge.

Timeliness in providing feedback and interacting with students is one of the key attributes that students, particularly online students, expect in their teachers. This isn’t an abstract argument, there are empirical studies which demonstrate this need. Great teachers who don’t respond to their students in a timely fashion are *not* great teachers.

I think your two examples supported my argument: the quality of the interaction with these people had a significant impact on you. Would you have responded in the same way to online texts or videos that they had produced? Probably not.

Finally, the US higher education system has different characteristics to Europe or Australia (my country), in terms of using economic thinking to shape teaching & learning. So any discussion about the economics of using online resources is bound to lead to misunderstandings. The differences extend to other domains, such as health insurance…

I taught for a number of years and was on undergraduate admissions committees at a university that accepts fewer than one in 12 applicants — the Google of schools. How do you turn 25,000 applicants into 1500 freshmen? Do you go with all perfect SAT’s? All perfect GPA’s? All perfect SAT’s WITH perfect GPA’s? You can cut it any way you like. So Google asks for all the information they can in order to make it easier to so “no.”

Bob

Pat F
September 6, 2009 at 8:54 am

Actually, perfect SAT scores with Bs and Cs is not a good sign. It shows you are smart and either lazy or disinterested.

Some kids with this setup do well in college because they were not challenged in high school. But most selective colleges won’t take the chance.

You have better chances of acceptance with great grades and only good SATs

Maybe I missed something in college (University of Washington, graduated in 1963 with a B.A. in Business Administration), but the only “personal interaction with an instructor” I recall was when I asked one of them to sign my application to be a Certified Public Accountant.

David W.
September 5, 2009 at 7:29 pm

First of all, there are lots of Universities like Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey and Excelsior in New York that offer *ACCREDITED* virtual degree programs. Officially, I got my degree from Excelsior while attending classes at the University of Texas, Rutgers, and a few other institutions.

There is also a bit of an issue with someone taking MIT’s lectures and simply offering them as their own degree program. Someone has to pay those MIT lecturers. MIT might not take it too kindly if Cringely U. decides instead of hiring professors, they’ll just give the students the freely available MIT lectures.

Plus, more goes on in a university besides lectures. Students (at least the good ones) work with the professors on various projects as interns (even undergraduates). Students with good rapport with the professors can use the professors as references for graduate school and other research facilities. Plus, there are the various academic clubs, visiting professors, lecture series, conferences, and the multitude of other things that make up the university’s climate. My oldest son, like many of his friends, is well known by almost all the professors in the Chemistry, Physics, and Math departments at his college for his academic achievements. There is simply no way he could get an equivalent education in a virtual setting.

True, not all students take complete advantage of the university climate. Many simply see their degree as a piece of paper that lets them get a nice job. These students want in and out. However, the better students take advantage of not just the classes, but the entire environment (and buy climate, I am not referring to playing on varsity Beer Pong team either).

Maybe there should be another level to our college system. In the old days, a high school degree was the ticket to many jobs. Now, most of those jobs now require college degrees. Unfortunately, college is simply getting too expensive for many people. Even a good state University can cost you almost $25,000 per year (I know because I’ve got two kids in state universities, and despite the public subsidy, it is still a $50,000/year education bill).

What we need is a level of education that is between what is expected of a high level college degree and a high school diploma that the vast majority of students would benefit from. This could be mainly online learning, virtual lecture series, and other methods that will keep costs down and make higher learning available to most people. With fewer children having to go off to an institution like MIT, more college aid would be available (and I don’t consider a student loan at 8% interest college aid).

Most students would still get an equivalent education. Those that simply look at a degree as attending classes and nothing more can go for the virtual education. Those that want to take advantage of visiting lecturers, seminars, academic based contests and clubs, and internships could still attend a physical four year institute.

Education is NOT just any other economic good, just as health care is not (read Krugman on the latter, you will see what an idiot you are). If education were conducted as a purely economic exercise, schools would extract all but $1 of the discounted present value of the marginal income attributable to the education. Sociologists pay $5. EE pays $10,000,000. The same applies if you try to apply to health care. Poor people don’t get health care; rich people get too much.

Both exercises lead to Dickensian morass. Western Europe has embraced the need for social goods; health and education in particular. A little known fact: one reason all those Indian IT folks can get by on $5/hour is that education is largely publicly funded; no overhang of student loans and no rich kids only getting an education.

Robert, let me tackle your post in good faith and with the full disclosure that I earn my way running an online business that teaches Chinese at http://popupchinese.com. You might want to check us out before smearing for-profit teaching. We are truly awesome. And we produce more social goods in the form of free software and learning tools than anyone else.

Some for-profit schools have problems. But so do a lot of non-profit schools. And none of them are relevant to online learning. You may want to argue that traditional schools provide more than content, but that doesn’t mean you can’t price that or find a way to better deliver it. In our area (language studies) traditional classrooms are genuine awful at delivering what they promise. But when you start running the numbers game with online programs like ours, you end up with a trade-off that looks something like this: a year of college language training, or a year of personal one-on-one online training and a four month summer vacation in Guilin.

Stepping back to Bob’s post, I think the answer to Bob’s implied question about why innovation isn’t happening faster is that innovation *is* happening. It’s just happening not in the space that deals with traditional universities. In my experience this is because the sales cycle is too long to break even and no-one has an incentive to improve things for students. The companies like Blackboard that are making headway in the traditional sector are doing so by focusing on solving administrative problems rather than student or learning-oriented ones.

It seems that the market already sets some rates for education. Nothing else would explain why (for example) Vanderbilt is $40k, and Westminster is $29K and Dallas County Community College is less than $10k per year. The argument can be made that the “best” professors are at the “better” (i.e. more expensive) institutions, but are ALL the professors “better?” How different can freshman English be? And, as has been noted above, what difference does the “best” professor make, when you are actually being taught by a teaching assistant? Higher education has done a masterful job of creating an illusion of the “need” for a degree, and an equal illusion of scarcity for the “top” institutions.

Wow, I am amazed by how much you pay for your education in the US. In the UK my degree was about £1200 a year and my masters was £1600 a year – basically we pay a token amount relative to what the government puts in. I got LOTS of one on one time with my lecturers – nearly equal to the teaching time.

You make some good points Bob about the learning resources. I’d rather employ someone with little formal education who has read a lot and actively learns all the time from books, magazines the internet etc than someone who lucked into MIT and doesn’t really care about learning beyond getting the certificate on the wall. Shame there isn’t a way of quantifying that.

Jenkins
September 6, 2009 at 2:33 am

Distance learning has great potential and it works now, and is earning big bucks now. The power of the Internet to disseminate knowledge and education is invaluable, especially if you live in less fortunate countries or at great distances to the college campus. In fact the Internet is the ideal way to bring the world up to speed regarding the needs for basic education standards and even more importantly health awareness.

This is assuming we can deliver these services to these less fortunate folks in the first place. Imagine how many more lives could be saved and redirected with a simple ten-minute video on HIV and the ability for the masses to access this?

However when it comes to professional education things are slightly different.

The key word is “Qualified” leading from “Qualification”. Two hundred students can read two hundred e-books, and still wind up with two hundred dissimilar understandings of the same book, or moreover the same subject? – Is this not what the classrooms aim to overcome?

Great works of fictional literature can be very cumbersome and difficult to read, this is aside from the complex works of philosophy or even science and medicine. If this kind of professional distance learning has a future, (and I hope it does), it must be furnished and aligned with a strict code of practice regarding testing and qualification of students and candidates. And this once again, all relies upon state of the art practices regarding cyber security, else we may end up catering to the likes of quack physicians and pseudo-scientists?

However, if the potential of the Internet does transform education techniques, there is still a place for the likes of the Ivy League, and it may even serve to provide them more exclusivity and elitism?

I totally agree with your post. Open course content, community learning interactions, and e-portfolios can replace traditional college education in many fields. It definitely can in computer science, maths, business, and almost any field which does not require a physical laboratory.

Right now the website is a bit primitive, but I am in the process of adding tools for rich learning interactions.

—
Regards
Parag

Moish
September 6, 2009 at 3:53 am

It’s all there for ages and it’s called Open University. Here, It’s highly respectable and
also offers advanced degrees.
What’s really interesting, is that every year, the OU is increasing the number of frontal courses, which don’t offer extra credits over self learning.
That’s the human nature, Bob.

For the last 15 years I’ve argued in university committees, vainly, that undergraduate programs should be looking seriously at the question of what happens during a campus-based university education that justifies the enormous debt that most parents and students incur. There is, I believe, something different from the online experiences, something that includes: body language; beer; stupid escapades; site visits; sports knocks and triumphs; forced encounters with different cultures; intellectual passion. I’m describing a social experience that includes more than the mind and that is “real time” and “hands on” and continuous.

When I raise the issue few even bother to argue with me. For the professors the reward system at universities (and even colleges) is almost always focused on research dollars brought in and PhD’s minted, not on effective teaching, and certainly not on what produces a productive graduate in the broader sense. I’d bet, for instances than far less than 10% of college professors have any serious contact with people in “student life.”

For that reason I suspect that Bob is right, but not for just his reasons. Our current higher education system is rigid, self-serving and unwilling to examine itself in any depth, in good part because the reward system is wrong. The higher education system does “work”, and we produce good research, but when Google, Microsoft, Texas Instruments or someone with international clout starts offering a “proof of competence” at 1/3 the price (while making a lot of money) via the net, many colleges and universities are doomed.

I’ve been a college professor of engineering for 20 years, after having my own Architecture firm for ten.

PS – It’s really important in any longer discussion to make distinctions based on age level. Would Bob argue the same way for kindergardeners?

Dave
September 6, 2009 at 5:06 am

I completely agree. My kids are 10, 8 & 4 years old. We watch things like Nova Science Now on PBS & Cosmos on Hulu. I get to play the role of in-house prof. The science instruction from those programs is phenomenal and it keeps the kid’s interest (even the 4 year old), and I can generally answer any questions they may have (with the help of google) regarding the program. I’m sure the same could be done with the history channel & discovery.

I think you could take this concept down all the way down to elementary school. Have our greatest minds, educators, child psychologists & Hollywood get together and make shows for a school year. Can you imagine having James Earl Jones lecturing you on algebra, with 3-d graphics by Pixar? The teacher could play the video for 30 minutes, then answer questions & do an exercise with the kids for 30 minutes. Repeat for the next subject. The videos could be nationwide, for public school, private school, homeschool.

In my discipline (design), there’s an element that simply can’t be replaced by computing (yet, and I personally would argue, for a very long time to come) – the studio environment. Designers work in deep collaboration with each other to solve problems, often using a combination of methods (whiteboard, physical models, digital artifacts, verbal communication) to articulate their ideas, to generate new ideas, and to respond immediately to criticism. In my experience both as an art and design educator and also as a practicing designer, existing tools that attempt to duplicate this are severely lacking. I’ll reference one specifically, but the comments are the same for nearly all I’ve encountered: Blackboard, perhaps the most omnipresent tool for delivering content educational content online, offers no modules or functionality geared towards the creative learning process. It consists primarily of forums, polls and lecture slides, and this type of content – even including video presentations or recorded lectures – are all intended for linear content consumption and don’t support divergent thinking, group ideation, nuances of body storming and body language, and the most fundamental element of design – the “hang it all up on the wall, take a step back, and reflect on the breadth and depth of your classmates” of a formal critique.

In my mind, then, what’s holding back the style of your proposal is not the content, the “system” of college, or even the professors; it’s the tools for online delivery.

existing tools that attempt to duplicate this are severely lacking.
Bob dismissed it last time, but there are a lot of educators in Second Life. Some are trying to recreate the studio experience from within the software. The Tech Virtual has a space where museum folks can collaborate in Second Life to develop exhibits for real life. Sure, it’s kludgey now. But does anyone expect it to stay that way for long? This is just one example.

Combine Google Wave with 2nd Life and you’re more than 80% of the way to what you’re describing. I believe that there are many people at work on this and it won’t take long before we’re able to offer the creative insight online as well.

Ron
September 6, 2009 at 5:21 am

Great, as long as we wouldn’t have to bare the brunt of the costs, while India and Asia get to steal the videos, streams, chat channels (or buy them at 5%). I just learned of this scam in the world of textbooks.

Peter
September 6, 2009 at 5:27 am

Seems to me that idea works OK in IT, where the subject of the material is also the device you need to access the material. It would be a lot harder in other areas.

It would be hard to imagine a chemistry degree that didn’t involve actually mixing some chemicals and smelling the result; biology that didn’t involve fiddling with petri dishes and getting bitten by rats; psychology degrees that didn’t involve conducting nasty experiments on undergrads; etc., etc. Most people don’t have the facilities to do any of that stored in their basements.

Almost any subject area I can think of (even arts) would/should require some shared experience, working with specialized facilities, etc.

FuzzyPrime
September 6, 2009 at 5:38 am

In the latest Star Trek movie there is a scene depicting a young Spock interacting with a teaching computer. The computer was more interactive and personal than a human could ever be in a classroom setting.

The idea that you could watch the lectures of a superstar in their field such as Richard Feynman has great appeal to me; in some form or other this is an idea whose time has come.

A few thoughts:
* It has always been possible to get a world class education simply by going to the public library. This is why Benjamin Franklin started one of the first public libraries in America. If Franklin were alive today he would no doubt approve. Despite this availability of knowledge, most people simply don’t take advantage of it. They haven’t since Franklin’s time. So I don’t think this will create a revolution in educating the masses. It will, as libraries do, benefit the few who have the motivation to use the resource.
* Although I might consider “Professor on Videotape” for half the professors I’ve met, for half I wouldn’t, and for many subjects it simply isn’t going to work. A class on Shakespeare needs to be a dynamic interaction. A class on finance needs to address the news of the day. There are legion examples.
* Most of the important learning people use in their careers is done after they’ve left the classroom. This is where I think, potentially, the idea of a virtual classroom may have a greater impact. Many people don’t have time to go back to school but they need to continue learning in their field and need to be able to do it on their own schedule.
* One of the reasons why tuition costs are spiraling out of control is marketing 101: universities don’t want their product to look cheap. This is why, paradoxically, you can raise tuition, and increase the size of your student body. It is also why you can increase the price of, say, an import beer, and sell more of it. Most students receive scholarship money from a sort-of “slush fund” so that tuition isn’t increasing as much as what the sticker price says. (In my radical opinion all tuition should be “free” by “donating” 1% of all your future earnings for each full year of coursework that you take–so I would do away with scholarships and financial aid entirely).

I’m from a country with free education – that’s right, you can get a university degree practically for free (you have to live on something, true, but in essence, all four or five years are free). The weird thing is that despite this, young people (who could study at university) are paying private schools quite a bit of money for various degrees. The problem seems to be that, since the university programs are free, the university has not bothered to update them in ages. With no competition, why bother? To make matters worse, liberal arts programs and economics seem to have the most up-to-date programs, while technical schools are ages behind. I study EE, and my uncle (who has recently retired) had the exact same classes thirty years ago, the only difference being that they have since become easier. A few individual professors try to move things along, but most of them have been teaching the same content for the past 20 or 30 years. It’s hard to fathom that many people who are studying telecommunications at a university level (again, for free) take exams such as Cisco’s CCNA on the side. Not because they need the certification, but because it’s the only way they can get real-world experience in their chosen field.

So many students become disillusioned with the program they are in that they enroll in a private school which is usually easier and much more specific. That, or they don’t finish their diplomas and just go work instead – even with only a year or two of computer sciences or electrical engineering, it’s not that hard to find work. Often, they’ll later enroll in an easy three-year program for no other reason than to get a degree of some kind.

So, in a way, this is already an economic model at work. With our university education the only thing you invest is your time – many people have decided that they don’t get enough out of this initial investment, and choose a different route. A wiki-type university with micro-payments would (if it offered a degree of some sort) would probably make a killing. If nothing else then because of the choice of subjects it would offer.

All in all, competition is welcome in most fields – and education is no exception.

Bryan C
September 6, 2009 at 6:09 am

As has been mentioned, distance education is nothing new (Athabasca University and the British Open University have been doing it successfully since long before the internet).

What has changed is quantitative, not qualitative. The amount of quality educational material available from publicly accessible sources has exploded (and is continuing to grow exponentially) over the last few years. Also, the ease with which people can find and work with this material has blossomed.

What needs to catch up is the evaluation and accreditation paradigm. While the instructional material is rapidly becoming available for almost all subject matter (at least at the first and second-year level… I’d contend that the latter years of even an undergraduate degree require the individualized instruction of small, interactive classes), we currently have no way of assessing and giving credit to students who have used these resources on their own.

Without really having any clear ideas of how it would work, I picture a future university consisting of a distributed work-force of subject matter experts who tutor and evaluate distributed, distance learning students as they progress through the “introductory/survey” courses in the curriculum of their programs, before being admitted to an on-campus program where they interact with professors and students in their finishing years. Indeed, to a large extent, distance universities like AU operate like this now; most of AU’s students take only some of their courses (usually the intro and second-year level courses) through AU, and then apply these credits to a degree from a conventional university where they complete their program.

In a sense, this is a return to the old fashioned model, before baccalaureate degrees were commonplace, when even undergraduate students interacted extensively with their academic mentors…

The problem, of course, is that such a model would remove the lucrative (and relatively low-cost) first and second year student tuitions from the present universities’ budgets, while leaving them with the ‘high-maintenance’ senior undergrads and grad-students. So, in order for such a model to take hold, a new source of funding will have to emerge for the universities.

Cheers

wwwpirate
September 6, 2009 at 7:20 am

You might be right on the surface Bob but basically your assumption is wrong. Only time will tell. I remember when I was at the university that meant me a lot just watching professors who wrote books that I studied from. That is psychological factor that pushes students to learn more and that makes lectures so much more interesting and easier to absorb. Regarding books and libraries they will be always around. Just like candles. You don’t need them any more but you can still buy them which means somebody is still buying and somebody is still manufacturing them. Books are just amazing invention. Just like any other great invention they are so simple yet so powerful. Books are like wheels. When you look at them it was so simple yet so powerful invention that there is no way to be replaced in a long long time. I read somewhere that difference between good engineer and genius engineer is that good engineer will make something to work but genius engineer will make it to work and it will be so simple that you would ask yourself : It is so easy so how I was not able to think about it? That is what books and wheels are.
Besides universities are brand names. Even guy like you won’t employ home schooled person if you have a choice between person from MIT/Stanford/Harvard and home schooled one.
I noticed that you often become excited when you read something. It looks right at the time but there is not deep analysis beyond that. I agree with you that some things get stuck in time and takes forever to change them. My personal thinking why that is happening comes to 2 things:
1.- If ain’t broke don’t fix it
2.- Especially older people think unconsciously that they’ll live forever if there is no change
Any way you are mostly always interesting Bob. Keep good work.

Frank p
September 6, 2009 at 7:04 am

I don’t think the cost problems are related to the classrooms. It has to do with other things. Actually, it’d be nice if they laid out what the costs are. I’m not so old as you but old enough to remember when they did registrations by hand and when they switched that over to computers it was supposed to make it cheaper and easier. Somehow it didn’t. If they switch to computers like you suggest the costs will probably keep going up anyway. Many people have suggested recently that they just charge whatever they can based on what students can borrow. I took some UCLA extension classes that didn’t have real tests or grades but I learned alot there, more than in graduate classes in computers. Extension classes aren’t cheap but the costs are contained to what you see and what you get. What you see and what you get is the real issue. You see a lab, a teacher, some paperwork and that’s what you pay for. Of course, you pick the classes you want based on what you need. At the “university” you take the “curriculum”, mostly classes you don’t want, and you’ve got a pileup of hidden costs that nobody wants to complain about because these are tied to people that need to approve you at various points along the way. It would solve most of the problems if they just banned the use of latin terms.

Theresa
September 6, 2009 at 7:53 am

I am ancient, and have obtained degrees both ways. I found going to class and interacting with other students to be far more instructive than taking online classes. Online classes tend to isolate the individual. Which is fine if you are an introvert, but if you are an extrovert and feed on the energy of being with others, than learning is better in a classroom setting.

I think this idea merits consideration but it is a method that is not for everyone. Maybe a smogasboard of educational opps would serve the need for education better?

Alan
September 6, 2009 at 8:09 am

Whew! So many narrow minded responses- maybe too invested in the big education complex. Young people do not learn and interact the same way they did in your day people!

So, you assert that the human brain (American division) has changed materially in one generation? If you can actually prove that, you’ll get the Nobel Prize in Medicine, Biology, and Chemistry. Such an achievement.

thomas
September 6, 2009 at 9:13 am

Robert;
I am only going to focus on one disturbing miniscule part of your post; dismantling libraries is really a bad thing to do. I think the college or university needs a big room full of books, old books. If they want a learning center with computer terminals; build one but leave the library alone! The rest of the concept could be of value to some people, and in my opinion should be implemented along with publicly funded education for all.

dave
September 6, 2009 at 9:39 am

Bob,

Actually MIT has very few of its classes available for viewing and/or audio – for most it’s just a list of books and some very sparse notes. A far better job has been done by Yale imho.
It’s a limited selection, but the classes are current and both video and transcripts are available.

Bob Miller
September 6, 2009 at 10:02 am

I am shocked, shocked! that you could use this title, this week, and write an entire column that has nothing to do with the festival of art and fire currently taking place at Black Rock City, Nevada.

bobo
September 6, 2009 at 10:30 am

This is a very interesting topic with a lot of good discussion. I believe the university experience (living on a campus) to be invaluable, but there is a problem with the reward system at many universities.

I’m trained in computer engineering, doing digital design. At my university at the time, test scores (midterm/final) were worth much more than lab work, but the lab work is where the actual teaching is done – messing with a design, seeing how it failed, learning algorithms, talking to peers, working with a TA. I spent much more time trying to get my lab work right than trying to ace the test. As a result, my GPA was a little lower, but I was much better prepared for “real life”, because the things I was doing in the lab were exactly the kinds of things I would be doing at a job. Additionally, with being in a computer lab, I wasn’t getting (nor asking for) a lot of professor assistance through office hours, etc.

This would seem to argue more for an online mechanism, because I could do my work on the computer, chat with other students, etc.

However, I think being at a university was much, much, more important. It was expensive, so I wanted to not spend too much time there – I wanted to get done, get out, and pay back the loans. Thus, I couldn’t “work at my own pace” (which you can when you do things on line). I had to hit deadlines, and those deadlines came one on top of the other (within a semester over multiple courses, or from semester to semester). This greatly enhanced, in my opinion, my ability to learn. I couldn’t just “take a break” because I was tired. You can’t get tired in real life and be successful.

Finally, juggling school work with parties, football games, etc. helps you learn that magical phrase “work/life balance”. I made friends there that were closer bonds than anything in high school. I felt I matured much more than my friends who lived at home and went to a local school. I was introduced to many more cultures than I otherwise would have.

I think there are a place for both forms – the big university, and the online university. I’ve known people who did Phoenix or other forms of learning, and they did fine – for them, it worked. However, I just don’t see the university system eventually collapsing (like the newspaper industry, for example) once somebody “figures it out”.

I hope my kids go away to school, because I think the life lessons far outweigh anything else. Even if they go away to a school that is no better academically than the local community college. Getting that dormitory/apartment hunting/sports bonding/party bonding life is a boon, IMO.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Glenn G
September 6, 2009 at 11:49 am

I remember the women’s dorms locking up at 10 pm during the
week, midnight on weekends! Not as old (not quite) as Bob,
but then it takes a while for social changes to arrive in th part
of the country I’m from.
Online education?? Computer taught classes? For these to be
acceptable to some professions will require some method to
prove competence, without cheating (think health care, do you
mean to tell me you would trust a surgeon who was instructed
only via iTunes? iMed…yeah, didn’t think so)
Finally…what would we do with college sports if we go to online
universities only? Of course, I’ve thought, for years, that the
universities should be awarding just as many full scholarships for
academic prowess as they do for athleticism!
CU L8R!

ronc
September 6, 2009 at 2:36 pm

$12,000 espresso machine vs. a Starbuck’s gift card…EACH student could easily spend about $4K per YEAR at Starbucks. So it would still be cheaper to give each 4-year student his own $12K espresso machine.

Doug
September 6, 2009 at 2:41 pm

Bob,
I agree that there is a revolution starting in education, and that the revolution is past due.
In my opinion, you are looking at the wrong end of the system. My kids are young (yours are not much older). My wife and I are discussing alternatives to the local public school. It is a nice school, in a new, upper middle class neighborhood. What they teach (seems like everything except for the basics) and the administration are making us crazy. I am sick of an administrator thinking they know better than I do what is right for my kid.
There are alternatives. We have home schooling, charter schools and now unschooling. Parents are sick of the crap going on in the schools, and watching good money go after bad.
Some of my in law’s kids do high school over the net. It is happening now.
The students leaving at an elementary level are a trickle, that is increasing. Home schooled kids will not need a traditional University. I doubt they will want one.
The argument about basic research being done for government grants does not hold up. Some entrepreneur will start a biopharma or agriculture research business. The grunt work will be done by researchers/students. The experience will put the students in higher demand than 8 years on campus. The young will follow the money.
There will always be a place for colleges and dorm life. Just like there will always be newspapers. It may not be just like it was back in the day. Sorry if that upsets some people.

Jeff
September 6, 2009 at 3:48 pm

20,000 book library? That’s not a library, it’s a private collection! UVA library has over 6 MILLION books. They have books in Lingala, Munukutuba, Chinese, Thai, Korean… Good luck digitizing a useful number of them in the next decade.

As a software engineer with an architecture degree I appreciate that library. Python, Grails, Swing, just a drive across town away and NOT $40 a pop.

I can imagine setting up a sort of “Bachelors of Independent Study” degree where you meet the minimum and specialize in what you want and a greatly reduced cost.

Till then, spend a year or two at a community college and transfer to a big-name to finish up.

[…] Cringley predicts the world of higher education is facing a revolution: There is enough good material available for free online right now that it would be easy to create a virtual university (WikiVersity?) with the only thing missing being the granting of degrees. It’s that whole “degree from MIT” thing that allows that school not to worry about sharing its lecture bounty, because in the education system lectures are viewed as worthless unless they lead to a degree. […]

“MIT has all its lectures available for viewing for free over the Internet.” … “Remember, all lectures are also available online for free.”

Wrong. This is just not true. It seems like nobody who writes about OCW has actually looked at the site. I just got a BS from MIT in mathematics. Only four (4) mathematics classes have videos, and those are introductory classes that satisfy general requirements or are intended for engineering students (calc I and II, diffeq, linear algebra). None of the core classes for mathematics majors have videos, let alone upper level classes. The same is true for physics. And every other major, I’m sure.

I don’t doubt that higher education is due for a radical reorganization, but I don’t think it will come from OCW. OCW has a long way to go before it could be used as the basis for a full college curriculum.

Jerry
September 6, 2009 at 9:12 pm

So the value of a university is in the social interaction, the labs, and the professor interaction?

The social interaction helps; peers do help you figure out things. Any successful form of schooling needs to be structured so you can learn from others, and make friends with them. Humanity is about people. :-/ And learning is about perspective in addition to facts and trends.

I found the labs (late 1980s) at my university, then the fourth best in Canada for engineering, to be okay in terms of cementing the lecture material in my head (chemistry, physics, electrical/computer engineering). Most of the lab equipment we used was old anyhow (just undergrads, who cares!?), and I’m sure were not worth millions of dollars. You do not need oodles of money to outfit a lab to perform many basic physics, chemistry, electronics, and computer science experiments. Some money, but not tons.

Professor interaction? It definitely increased toward the end of my degree but at the start it was nil. I was not the brightest guy around either, and it was a lot more work than high school, but I was able to learn what I needed from the text, from friends, and from figuring it out on my own.

Also, the quality of teaching in most faculties other than engineering I found to be very poor, with the exception of one math prof whom I had for two courses.

I think the point Bob is making is that there is room for great improvement by erecting an alternative structure for higher education. The universities are empires built by people who like running such things. I guess it has always been this way, sometimes more, sometimes less. However, there have always been people that prefer to live free from the “empire” and who are also willing to help others escape its grasp. We have the opportunity today to take the good things of communities of learning, chuck out some of the bad, and build a different form that produces better results for less money wasted.

You seem to be under the impression that professors are paid 200,000$/year to teach. They’re not. Professors have no interest in teaching, otherwise they would be in college or high school. Research Universities have no interest in teaching. Yet, students go to these universities because they recognize that they will learn more by being in an university where research is actually done and having the privilege to work with the best in field.

If you offer professors the same salary for teaching online, they’ll be happy that they can finally send their students there and focus on their research. But they won’t move out of the university, unless you equip your online university with a lab and research funds.

David Groenewegen
September 6, 2009 at 11:59 pm

I’ve worked in universities for a long time, and lived through the “virtual university” hype more than once now, yet despite many universities pouring a lot of money into it we still have a bunch of campuses. Universities have not ignored the possibilities in this space, but very few have ever really gotten it to work beyond creating a fancier/more efficient version of distance education. That said, I was at a talk given by Larry Smarr from UCSD recently, where he made a good case that the web is almost at the stage where the virtual, real time lecture theatre is possible and will be the catalyst for change (you can find his presentations on the technology he has been working on and with at http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/presentations/lsmarr/index.php). His contention was the same as Bob’s – the “perfect course” with the preeminent lecturers in a field doing their stuff virtually is very close.

Many of the comments on this thread point out that universities reward research, not teaching. So if your university could decouple these – have lectures run by the “virtual” stars of the field, then let your researchers do research and participate in stuff that mostly needs to be hands on, wouldn’t that be the best of both worlds? You’d certainly save a lot of lecture theatre space if you don’t require students to congregate to hear the lecture, and your researchers could devote more time to research (and grant applications) and less to lecture preparation/presentation.

Solomon Asare
September 7, 2009 at 2:17 am

An excellent perspective. This will be very helpful to those of us in the developing world. Access to excellent education at affordable cost. This will help avoid cases like: (UG turns down applications of over 8,000 qualified students. We are caught in a vicious cycle of not having enough resources to train the human capital that is needed to accelerate our development. We can do a lot more with a mix of your approach and a few others.

Computer animation is an interesting field to look at in light of this debate. Degrees are not necessarily considered when evaluating potential employees, there exists a plethora of training in the field available online for both purchase and for free, there’s forums and online communities where students can interact with each other as well as with industry pros having questions answered and getting advice via critiques on their work, and there are even community projects where students can work with others to produce a work. So then why do computer animation programs not just survive but are expanding?

I think there are several factors. First, there’s connections to be made which are much harder to make online. Never underestimate the power of face to face meetings over emails, posts and tweets. In a competitive field, it could come down to who you know and I feel without that face to face time it’s much harder to make such beneficial connections, be it with instructors, visiting artists or fellow students. Another thing gained is internships. Here, the school provides an “in” to the industry which is increasingly more difficult for someone on their own to get plus, again, this is further access to that all important face to face time, this time being with a potential employer.

Another lesson unavailable on one’s own is observing how others perform. Sure, with online forums you can follow someone’s work in progress but you are relying on what they decide to share with the world. Who knows what’s left out, including failed attempts. I think it’s an invaluable tool to observe how your peers work, and that’s impossible unless you’re in their midst. The same could be said for instructors and visiting artists for just like with people posting their works in progress online, when you download a lecture or tutorial you’re getting the version they want you to see without the errors or unforeseen problems that might have popped up and subsequently overcome.

Finally, there’s one’s ability to quickly grasp subjects as well as their level of self motivation. True there are bright, motivated people who can, as autodidacts, get to where they want to be but possibility doesn’t necessarily make for reality. I feel these people are few and far between and for most, they require being surrounded by other students and instructors for help in both grasping the material as well as for motivation. Such things may be available through online means, but still that assumes a fair amount of self motivation to start with plus, as I’ve explained earlier, still lacks much in comparison to the traditional face to face means.

[…] 8, 2009 · Leave a Comment Robert X. Cringley, technology commentator, has a new post on higher education. Cringley points to MIT OCW and asks why new schools haven’t been built […]

Bhima
September 8, 2009 at 4:25 am

I am a 47 year old college drop out & autodidact. I have been working as a technician & subsequently engineer developing medical diagnostic devices for 23 years and as of June I am unemployed. To land a job doing what I was doing before I essentially need a Master’s degree. To get any sort of degree I would be required to begin exactly like an incoming 17 year old freshman student. But I am not 17 years old, I am not completely inexperienced, and I am not completely unknowing of those things taught in university for the first couple of years. Worse this process would require nearly 8 years of school, nearly putting me at retirement age at graduation.

I would welcome some sort of educational experience like this. No. I am desperate for such a thing.

You’re missing a piece I think. If I’m a, say, chemistry major, it’s not just listening to lectures, It’s doing lab work. That requires a bunch of expensive equipment and chemicals with very specific regulations and safety requirements.

I don’t think you can require every EE major to buy a fancy logic analyzer, either.

It might in the future. In the meantime, we ought to consider whether we would want to eat drugs made by virtually trained chemists, fly in airplanes designed by virtually trained structural engineers and eat at restaurants operated by virtually trained chefs. It just doesn’t fly.

The model John proposes could only work for fields where the ideas are the product: software, hardware design(!), literature, history, etc.

But, the argument falls flat when one considers the fact that virtually every single one of the autodidact pioneers ultimately educated him/herself with books, ideas and lectures produced by highly qualified, degreed people. Everyone in the Manhattan project had a PhD. Wozniak was working with materials, techniques and logic developed by academics.

It’s disingenuous to use a few outliers to make the case for the larger population.

Statistically speaking, it is an insane thing to do.

(yet another) John
September 8, 2009 at 6:00 am

Bob said … “If I were running Straighterline, then, I’d get ready to file a big restraint of trade lawsuit against some big vulnerable school caught up in, say, an NCAA athletic recruiting scandal.”

The problem with this is that it’s the (Regional) Accreditation that is imposing the “restraint of trade” and not any individual university. I’ve done a bit of research on accreditation and it’s not easy; they impose many artificial barriers in today’s world.

The Distance Education and Training Council is probably the place to start. They also have a few things that may prove to be “barriers” (i.e. they do not accredit doctoral programs); however, they would probably be more flexible. The real problem here is that many schools will not accept credits for transfer unless they come from a Regional Accrediting Agency — but that has (and will be) litigated in the courts.

Elan
September 8, 2009 at 7:02 am

Hi Bob,
While I have been a long time listener and reader, this is the first time I am sharing my knowledge with you.. There is already just such a system and has been in effect for years. From ex-pat GIs to prisoners working toward their law degrees, it is very possible to get a college degree and even an MBA without stepping foot on campus or taking a single class. (See http://www.bain4weeks.com/)
Nearly every college course has the GED equivalent that allows a student to test out of taking the class.

The material is usually covered in the syllabus and the tests are offered by a variety of testing centers and schools for about $90 for a 3 credit course. That is $30 per credit and just about $3600 for a college degree.

You can confirm the details directly with the colleges and schools mentioned and the degrees have been accepted for higher learning at most institutions.

My take away: The marginal cost of insight. Insight as understanding. Understanding as acceptance of a new cognitive structure. Acceptance as facilitated by relationship with someone who can serve as an adult guarantor or guide.

Your comments about who are our teachers in this sense leads me to realize that (a) our teachers are everywhere and (b) that they can provide this guidance and acceptance through writing. I remember bumping into the works of Mary Midgley, the British humanist philosopher, when my son brought her books home from college. One of her titles, appropriate for this discussion is Wisdom, Information and Wonder. Mary pours brilliance and humor into her arguments. And just the fact I use her first name says a lot about the “thou” in my relationship to her books.

I wonder if, in the golden future of online universities, it won’t be writing that dominates the vetting process. In other words, those who can’t write first rate English (US) won’t make the cut.

Western Governors University is a fully accredited online university that allows even testing out many IT certifications as finals tests for their related classes.

Further they have a fully accredited teaching program. From what I understand they’re one of the better online schools and only cost about $6000 per year. Plus books of course…

Randy
November 4, 2009 at 9:27 am

WGU Rocks…challenging courses and flexible schedule..the cost is mor in line with the costs of a traditional university.

TrueRock
September 8, 2009 at 11:44 am

The College-Level Examination Program® (CLEP) gives you the opportunity to receive college credit for what you already know by earning qualifying scores on any of 34 examinations. Earn credit for knowledge you’ve acquired through independent study, prior course work, on-the-job training, professional development, cultural pursuits, or internships.

[…] I, Cringely: Information technology reporter Robert X. Cringely asks why academic education hasn’t faced the price drops other industries connected to IT have faced: MIT has all its lectures available for viewing for free over the Internet. Why hasn’t some entrepreneur yet leveraged this amazing act of generosity? Some little school could outsource its entire physics theory department, for example, using MIT lectures and a single professor in-house. My physics theory department had only 2.5 professors (the .5 was the department chair who drove a cab on the side) and we didn’t have the benefit of MIT video. […]

Scott B.
September 9, 2009 at 8:57 am

Overall, I think Cringley has misread the higher education system.

First, there’s a tendency in this country to gloss over social interactions in the name of “merit.” We like to think as Americans that everything depends on just how good you are, so if you can just pass that test, then success will arrive at your door. This is simply not true. A good deal of success comes from knowing the right people, and by going to Harvard or MIT (which getting into is to a good degree merit based), you are exposed to those people and gain a good deal of recognition in those types of circles by being part of that network. People forget that Steve Jobs was working for Atari when he set off to start Apple, and without those contacts he probably wouldn’t have been as successful. Sure, smart people without degrees have done a lot, but you ignore the networks they were in at the time.

Second, on the research front, “graduate schools” are first and foremost schools. What the professors are teaching when not lecturing undergrads is how to do research. In science and engineering fields, undergraduate work gives you the basic technical education and prepares you to learn more either in practice or in research. Graduate school picks up from there and teaches you how to be a scientist (i.e., formulating problems and applying the scientific method). And in doing the research, knowledge is created, which is then taught to students, etc. So, deep down, knowledge creation is just as much a part of the university as knowledge teaching.

Lastly, speaking as a former TA, it annoys me to see the usual “interaction with professors” thrown about as if interaction with TAs is worthless. Students get a TON of one-on-one interaction from TAs in the form of office hours and recitations. To imply that two hours a week of face time with a professor could substitute for that (for how many courses, four?) is off the mark considerably. And who are those TAs? Other high quality students at the high quality universities. And the classmates helping each other with homework? Also high quality students. There’s no guarantee of that at totally open enrollment online universities.

What OCW and the similar materials provide is greater access to materials and teaching methods to allow outsiders to improve their teaching, but by no means is it nearly a replacement for the interaction of a campus.

Phil
September 10, 2009 at 8:41 am

Scott: My physics TA at Pitt in 1983 couldn’t speak English, so how did that contribute to my education? He was great at writing the math down, but past that we were on our own in that lab.

Wang-Lo
September 10, 2009 at 10:07 am

Phil: Well, I’d guess no other experience has had quite the same effect on your bias regarding all those foreign heathen physicists who are stealing our best research jobs.

[…] and these texts would be right at the start of the course. Jane (I think) pointed me to Bob Cringely’s scorching warning to the education industry. I don’t think Cringely is quite right about most of what he says, but […]

Jeffrey Lederer
September 10, 2009 at 9:24 pm

I think you are looking at the problem from the wrong angle. A university education is expensive because of the high cost structure of almost all universities. They have large physical plants with large non-academic staffs and do many non-academic activities (such as sports.) Cut out these expenses and the cost per year with even excellent teachers would be $10,000 per year.

Full disclosure first: I work at a major, traditionally-formed, land-grant American university.

But before you flip the “Biased, cluelessly mired in the past” bozo bit, consider one thing: Bob talks about student-professor interaction as if it can be distilled down to the imparting of insight, and sold in concentrated form in a sort of vending machine.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t work that way. Yes, two brilliant people can encounter each other and have a light-bulb moment in five minutes’ talk. But these are outliers, not the mode, nor even the upper quartile. Let’s not even consider variations in intelligence, prior knowledge, and social skills among the students for now, other than to point out that concentrating the access to professors would only exacerbate the disadvantages for those who’re lacking in one or more of those.

What about those insights, the “aha” moments? Can you distill your interaction with a professor down to just the good stuff? I submit that you cannot — the insights come as a result of a relationship, not a transaction. It’s a human process, messy and inefficient at its best. Expecting that students can hit a teacher for ten minutes’ high-octane interaction on demand, without spending previous time together, is like hoping you can streamline software development by only writing the GOOD code — “Don’t waste any time writing bugs or tests or talking to people about requirements, ‘K thx bye.”

That said…we sure streamlined code writing a ton in the past ten years. I sure hope we can make do with less classroom time, because from the way swine flu is hitting this campus, we’re gonna be launching a little distance learning experiment this fall willy-nilly, ready or not.

Vaughn Corden
September 14, 2009 at 12:13 am

What about National University in San Diego? Fully accredited and most of their content is online. Their cost to complete a degree, at less than $15,000 per year, is only a little higher than you suggested.

[…] the enormous potential for new modes of learning was recently discussed by Anna Kamenetz and Bob Cringely. Not everyone needs, or can afford, a college education that comes repleat with sport teams, […]

Don Smith
September 17, 2009 at 3:08 pm

“When was the last time any employer asked to see your academic transcript? Have they ever?” Bob, I love just about everything you do, but Google does ask for your academic transcript. At least they used to :).

Don Smith: I interviewed at Google two years ago and they never asked for my academic transcript. Nor has anyone. Ever.

Jason Lawrence
October 3, 2009 at 7:04 am

From my college experience (at least as an undergrad) I learned almost as much from fellow students as from professors. (In fact, with one particularly useless thermodynamics professor, I learned everything from a fellow student.) Obviously it isn’t necessary to shell out thousands of dollars a year to meet other brilliant people, but I wonder how to get that same peer learning effect in a virtual school.

[…] The education sector is facing a hurdle similar to the newspaper industry, where the available distribution technology wasn’t taken seriously until they were already lagging behind. The future to act is now, but […]

[…] The education sector is facing a hurdle similar to the newspaper industry, where the available distribution technology wasn’t taken seriously until they were already lagging behind. The future to act is now, but […]

[…] Robert Cringley joins other prophets in predicting the downfall of post-2ndary education…great quote: “What drives the education industry is producing degrees while what drives the computer industry is producing products and services.” Substitute “computer” for any industry and you got cause for concern. […]

I think despite the credit laundering aspects of online schools, distance learning would be the way to progress in academics for many students. While current emphasis is on accreditation of a given course or even a department, I am sure the model will achieve maturity in the fullness of time to include more metrics for validation.

A clear image or design that represents the item being sold adds a level of realism to your site, and gives customers more confidence in your merchandise or services. By being able to actually see either a photograph or detailed depiction of the goods they’re considering, a customer is more likely to buy those goods.

You’re missing a piece I think. If I’m a, say, chemistry major, it’s not just listening to lectures, It’s doing lab work. That requires a bunch of expensive equipment and chemicals with very specific regulations and safety requirements.cheap VPS
I don’t think you can require every EE major to buy a fancy logic analyzer, either.

You know, I gotta tell you, I genuinely relish this website and the great insight. I find it to be energizing and very educational. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyway, I felt it was about time I posted a comment on I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Burn Baby Burn – Cringely on technology – I just wanted to say that you did a great job on this. Cheers mate!

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